Actors

Atomic Dandy Actor Ham Chants Damned Ballads Badly

by Enormous on August 8, 2008

My struggling actor friend has formed a band – Hamilton Bentley and The Jesus Robots – and has just asked me to produce their first single.

‘I never imagined you as a singer, Ham,’ I laughed.

‘Wonderful, isn’t it!’ He flopped on to the leather sofa in the control room with a loud thump. ‘The idea hit me like an atom bomb.’

He played me some tapes of a recent rehearsal. It was awful. It sounded like Perry Como singing songs by The Damned.

‘You’re not serious, are you?’ I asked him.

He gave me a tight smile. ‘Deadly serious.’

‘Ham, I – ‘

‘More serious than I have ever been, dear boy.’ He was looking at me with the kind of focus that could, in fact, split an atom.

Raising an eyebrow, I showed a spark of appreciation and told him, ‘Leave it with me. I’ll have few more listens and see if I can come up with any ideas.’

‘At last,’ he sighed, ‘fame beckons.’

‘Indeed.’ I had to push him out the studio door. ‘You should go now, Ham, it’s time for your midday drunkening. The stimulation is just too much for me – if we talk about your new career any further, I’m afraid I may have an orgasm. I might spontaneously combust due to over-excitement. Cheerio.’

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Seafood Blues

by Enormous on July 28, 2008

I am never eating oysters again.

The snot-like little slimy beasts I had on Saturday were lovely going down, but not so great coming back up. I don’t believe they were off, but they definitely did not agree with my constitution. Audrey, wise little dog that she is, did the right thing by refusing them.

I have one good thing to report: When an emetic as powerful as two dozen oysters and several bottles of Cava is consumed with actor friends on a hot, sunny afternoon in July, you will not need to detoxify your body afterwards as your insides will experience a thoroughly good clean-out during the course of the subsequent twenty-four hours.

And I would advise that you make sure your lavatory is in good working order beforehand as, to paraphrase Monty Python, such an undertaking really opens up the sluice-gates at both ends.

On the Fantastic hi-fi today:
The Essential Leonard Cohen – Leonard Cohen

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Lead In My Pencil

by Enormous on July 27, 2008

I had some oysters yesterday. Fresh and big and full of the taste of the sea.

My actor friend Hamilton Bentley paid Audrey and me a visit. He came to boast about his part as an extra in the new British film Donkey Punch. He recounted how he had asked the director for a line and had been given one, only for it to be eventually cut in the final edit. ‘That’s life,’ he suggested, his words full of guarded hope.

His overall demeanour was as resigned as ever but he had decided to celebrate none the less, bringing with him a large cool-bag full of ugly shellfish and two bottles of frosty Cava.

I have never eaten oysters before and to tell you the truth, I was a little apprehensive. I needn’t have been; they were delicious.

Audrey would not eat one, though, preferring instead one of her curly chews made from cows’ eyes.

These particular oysters caught off the Essex coast are apparently prized for their aphrodisiac qualities. Look out local ladies – I’m a loaded gun.

On the Fantastic hi-fi today:
Fortress Round My Heart – Ida Maria

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The Dark Intruder

by Enormous on July 23, 2008

I had a terrible nightmare last night. I thought that someone was in my room.

I was dreaming that a man was standing in silence at the foot of my bed and that he was there to do me harm. ‘Wurhurrrr! Audrey!’ I called for my little dog, but she was hiding under the bed and refused to help. I managed to open my eyes slightly and realised that the intruder was in fact Hollywood heartthrob Christian Bale.

‘I’m Batman,’ he said. ‘The Dark Knight.’ He sounded like Scooby Doo.

I sleepily moaned a question. ‘Yes, it is a dark night, isn’t it – what do you want?’

He held out his hand. ‘Can you do me a favour and lend me ten quid?’

‘Look, Batman . . . Christian . . . whatever – I don’t negotiate with terrorists, please leave. And anyway, why are you dressed as Einstein? And what the hell are those!?’ He could have been the famous scientist’s identical twin had it not been for the fact that he had grown a pair of enormous breasts.

He moved closer. ‘After I’ve given you a good hiding,’ he barked, ‘I’m off back to the Batcave to work on my theory of Relativititty.’

Suddenly, he wasn’t so frightening. ‘You’re crazy,’ I told him. ‘No wonder you got arrested.’

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Blog Off

by Enormous on April 20, 2008

No post today, I am trying not to think.

Hamilton Bentley, my actor friend, paid me a visit last night in his new car – a twenty-year-old Lada that had so many rattles, it sounded like he was delivering a drum kit – and made me get drunk with him.

‘You should see your face,’ he told me as he entered the house.

‘Why?’

‘It’s lovely.’

I think it is marvellous that a man can pay another such a compliment without there being even the slightest suggestion of attempted homosexual seduction. Hamilton is a very liberated individual, and coming from him, such a statement is nothing more than a very accurate observation. He wouldn’t have said the same thing if he had seen me at 7am this morning, however.

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Stinking Pitt

by Enormous on January 4, 2008

I had a strange dream about Brad Pitt last night.

My band Enormous had a gig at the Royal College of Music and Brad, being a fan, had contacted our management to ask if he could come with us as part of our road crew – I think he was doing some research for a part in a movie.

Bizarrely, it transpired – with the help of some Fantastic dream-logic – that Brad knew my mother quite well, so it was arranged for him to be picked up from her house in Mansfield. When we arrived, he was waiting at her front door. She was fussing all around him, looking him up and down and tutting constantly in that expert way that mothers do. In one hand she held her purse and in the other, her nose. ‘Hi, mum, Brad,’ I said cheerfully.

‘He stinks!’ she protested, to no one in particular.

And indeed he did. I don’t know if it was Audrey who had broken wind and the noxious aroma had invaded my dream or something, but the stench coming from the handsome film star was of the worst kind.

‘It’s his jeans!’ she went on. ‘Look at the state of them! I insist that you let me buy you some more, Brad.’

I felt slightly uncomfortable standing there in the rain, staring at Brad Pitt’s famous legs, but it was true: his ruined denims were in tatters and it was obvious that the offensive smell was coming mostly from that area of his body.

The band and our entourage sat in the van and had to wait while I, under orders from my mum, was forced to escort the unfortunate Mr. Pitt to the local Tesco’s to buy him a new pair of trousers. ‘Right, shall we go to the shop then, Brad?’ I asked him.

Too touched by my mother’s charity to say anything, he merely coughed his embarrassed assent and we walked to the supermarket in silence, twinned by our awkwardness.

He chose the cheapest pair of jeans he could find (only £3.00!) and on our return to the house, we jumped into the van – the two of us pleased beyond words with our frugality – and sped off with the rest of the band down the motorway towards London.

From then on, my dream was even more anomalous. The gig was the usual fraught experience due to my forgetting all the chords and lyrics to our songs and the audience was dressed as warthogs. Brad disappeared into the mists of semi-consciousness, and later on, I had sex with a beautiful blonde-haired student of the violin who said she was the Queen of England – which was rather pleasant. It all got a bit weird after that.

I do remember this though: after the gig, as we were loading the various monitors, guitar amplifiers and drum cases into the van, Brad was nowhere to be seen.

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Double Glazing

by Enormous on December 20, 2007

Audrey and I put Hamilton on the train to Manchester this morning. He spent more than an hour on the telephone to his agent after breakfast and has managed to borrow a modest flat in the city for a few months. He even has some voice-over work lined up.

He also dug deep and managed to find the energy to flatter the attractive girl in the ticket office on the frosty westbound platform of Alfreton station. ‘Darling, your beauty is so radiant that it brings unspeakable pain to an average man’s eyes,’ he told her.

She eyed him with feline detachment from behind the toughened glass of her tiny booth before replying, ‘That’s twenty-five pounds and seventy-nine pence, please.’

Then, rather unexpectedly, she looked at me and held my gaze for a few seconds. If I was more fanciful, I might have assumed that there was some romantic significance in her stare, but I fear it was merely my overactive thyroid playing up again. Either way, I cannot deny that Hamilton’s observation was not inaccurate: she did indeed have very beautiful grey eyes and otherwise exquisite features.

‘Your Uncle Nelson arrives tomorrow,’ I reminded Audrey as we made our way back to the house.

The dashing and debonair Mr. Galaxy will be here for two weeks to continue working on his début album and, it being Christmas and all, we shall probably have to venture out of an evening to hunt for sexy lady women girls. ‘Tis the season to polish my mojo.

Meanwhile, my little dog knows that later today she will be having her yuletide bath (I may even have one myself, come to think of it) and consequently, she is doing her best to hide from me. She is ensconced presently in a dark corner under the bed trying to look as tiny and inconspicuous as possible. She is being as quiet as a mouse, but if she were to say anything, it would probably be this: ‘Nobody here but us chickens!’

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